Babyland – The Finger

The Finger, Babyland’s fifth album, is a great collection of “electronic junk punk” music that features punk rock vocals over electro-pop beats. The twelve tracks vear towards industrial synth-pop, electro and retronica. The strained, sprechstimme vocals about life, love, loss, paranoia and angst contrast with percolating dance synth backgrounds.

Imagine Vince Clark of Depeche Mode/Yaz/Erasure getting together with Joe Strummer of the Clash. Like the Clash or Erasure, Babyland builds their tracks on pure pop songs, but makes them unique with its unique approach.

It’s an interesting combination, and Babyland pulls it off well, making this one of the most surprising and exciting electronica releases of the year.

Several tracks stand out as highlights of the CD. Defeated sounds a little bit like I will survive for the downtrodden:

We’ve been defeated
We’ve been discarded
We always ask ourselves
Why did we start this?
We are frustration
We are refusal
That can’t go away
In devastation and decline
Let the record still reflect
We won’t go away.

Other great tracks are Reno Machine, Nowadays and Nativity.

The tracks are full of strange and creative sounds. There’s lots of interesting synth work, but also a lot of banging on metal things. This, along with the unique punk vocals, make The Finger different from any other electronica release you’ll hear this year.

Something To Think About

One always has to remember these days where the garbage pail is. It’s so easy to make sounds and to put sounds together into something that appears to be music – but it’s just as hard as it always was to make good music.

— Bob Moog

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